Antonio Villaraigosa has been called L.A.’s “pop star mayor” and faced criticism for spending more time schmoozing with Hollywood stars and Democratic Party leaders than governing the city. But there’s no question Los Angeles underwent a transformation during Villaraigosa’s two terms in office, which ended last year: In an effort to shift the car-crazy town toward more public transit, the city added new rail lines connecting downtown to sprawling suburbs. And downtown L.A. itself, long an office-centric ghost town, has also changed dramatically, becoming a vibrant urban neighborhood with a residential population more than twice its size 15 years ago.

How much credit should Villaraigosa get for that transformation? “Rather than say, ‘I did it,’ I prefer to talk about what we did in those eight years,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I was mayor during this time. You can make the deduction.” Today, Villaraigosa, who splits his time between L.A. and New York, holds advising jobs at Herbalife and the PR firm Edelman, as well as a teaching gig at the University of Southern California. Here, he looks back at L.A.’s evolution during his time as mayor and looks ahead to where the city is headed next—even if cars, for now, are very much still in the picture.

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Downtown L.A. has come back to life in recent years. What was your contribution to that transformation was as mayor?

On transportation, I said we were going to build a Subway to the Sea [running from downtown to the westside]. … As if anybody has the wherewithal to just snap their figures and get a subway. But we went to the [state] legislature to get on the ballot a measure to raise a half-penny sales tax to generate $40 million over 30 years. I won’t say I built it myself, but we added one [metro-extension] busway, four rail lines, and four more are under construction, for a total of eight rail lines. It was the most ambitious effort to build light rail and heavy rail in the United States of America at that time.

We went to Congress and promoted the idea that almost everybody ridiculed—America Fast Forward—at a time of high deficit and debt. The federal government didn’t have the money and was unwilling. We had passed the half-penny sales tax [in L.A.], and I said we could expand a [federal] loan program that was underutilized and underfunded almost tenfold and provide low-cost loans and grants to cities, counties and states. … Finally, we convinced Congress and the [Obama] administration. And I was standing next to the president when he signed the service transportation bill, which allowed L.A. to accelerate its infrastructure program.

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There was also an ordinance that was passed a couple years before I became mayor—the adaptive reuse ordinance. That along with the public transportation allowed us to create density around transit centers. Downtown was one of them. Hollywood too. Downtown is the biggest—that’s where Union Station is. Mixed-use development is there and in Hollywood in no small part because that’s where the transit is. You’ll see it along Wilshire Boulevard too. We were very clear that we weren’t just building up transportation; we were going to reimagine the city. Can a city as big as L.A. really become less car-dependent?

Over time it can. It certainly won’t in the next decade or so. But as we build this system out, as we promote development along transportation hubs and lines, I think we’ll see people use the system more and more because they live along those lines—much as people do in New York, Chicago, Boston and other big cities.

There’s a fear now that downtown’s gentrification is pushing out the homeless and the poor. Was that a concern for you?

That’s why I really pushed inclusionary zoning [to support affordable housing]. There was a lot of opposition on the city council to it and from the business community. It did concern me. I did believe that we could build and rebuild in a way that was more inclusive, and yes, I was a big supporter of that. I didn’t have the eight votes on the council. There was a lot of lobbying against it by developers, who frankly were afraid that the city would go too far. Our proposals were fairly moderate, but they opposed it.

We were the homeless capital of the United States. In L.A., we have to convince the county to do the services around our housing; it’s called permanent support housing. We did, I think, 726 units in the 12 years before me. In the eight years of my administration, we did 2,500. We could have done even more, but the county resisted our efforts to put the housing throughout the city and not just in one area of the city. It was disproportionately downtown where they were willing to provide services, and we needed to put it throughout the region, throughout the city.

Some of your critics say that as mayor you didn’t focus enough on politics.

Some critics say I spent too much time on politics. I don’t put much stock in the critics.

What do you think downtown L.A. will look like in, say, five or 10 years?

I think you’ll see more and more a 24-hour downtown, a vibrant center of the city. But over time, I think you’ll see that in other areas as well. I think Hollywood certainly is one of them. We worked hard in our planning efforts to incentivize mixed-use development and incentivize development along transportation lines, and that is something that as we continue to build this system … that, along with the planning changes that were made, will continue to transform downtown and the entire city.

I’ve always said that L.A. is the city of America’s future. It is to the world London was in the 19th century and New York in the 20th because of the growth of the Pacific Rim countries. We’re the portal to the emerging world.